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Alternative Earth

I guess I can wrap up a map I originally started for a Steampunkish/Noir type of story that was going around my head (same setting as the colonies on Venus kind of map that is still WIP).

The map is aimed at being functional that's easy on the eyes, so there's not many bells and whistles.

Basically the idea is that World War 1 hasn't occred, or at least not as we know it. The European political landscape is largely intact, at least in the west. In the East Russia was forced into liberalization by an ever stronger middle class. These oligarchs forced Russia to become a republic; these days it's largely run by enterpreneurs and a handful of corporations.

The Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary also reformed and became a lose federation that now encompasses all the Balkans after other nations joined the union voluntarily.

In South America the people rose up against foreign domination of the economy (esp. in Argentina and Central America). The spread of revolutions led to the founding of the United Socialist states of South America. This Union fought a bloody war against The Americans and British in Mexico, and against the Brazilians in the south American coastal regions. Despite naval superiority the Union was self reliant enough to force the enemies into a draw. Mexico became partitioned into a democratic north and communist south. Brazil declared its neutrality.

In Africa, Belgium squeezed the Congo so much it broke and kicked out the oppressors in a bloody guerilla campaign. Angola joined their northern brothers and together proclaimed the Free African Republic. There's uneasy tension between the new nation and its colonial neighbours.

The young Turks have taken over the Ottoman Empire, reforming it from within and bringing it closer to the west. In the Far East China has collapsed into warring factions. The colonial powers seized the opportunity to claim all the coastal regions.

Australia refused to fight against the South Americans in the Anglo-British war against them and declared themselves the (left leaning) Commonwealth of Australia that maintains close ties to the USSSA. An Australian invasion of New Zealand, however, failed.

It's a good map. But to make it more mappy...If that's a word it needs a legend stating the following.
- What colours stand for what politics. At the moment I have no idea what greenland and Iceland stand for.
- A date
- A Map projection (Mercatore by the look of it)
- Statement of maker (Made by...)
- Notations on the scaled frame telling us what is what degree 30° 60°

You are right with the "mappy" bit. When you look at historical maps since the renaissance the mapmapers tended to cram as much information as possible onto the map. Where information was lacking they added imagery, sea monsters etc. Later maps (esp. in 19th century) were a bit tidier, but any map in an atlas or schoolbook also added a lot of information - geograpical features, political divisions, longitual/latitudal data, often shipping lanes or similar.

This was not what I was going for with this map - it's meant more as something you'd find in a newspaper, offering a general overview, but no too detailed data. Something that may illustrate an article about foreign policy.

I think this is a wonderfully colourful map. It does the job you intended, and reminds me of imperial maps you might find in a textbook. It would make a great map for a novel or RPG set in an alternate imperial age.

Giving the oceans a bit more detail, like the shipping lanes you mention, would be useful, and perhaps exporting the map from CC3 at a larger size would make the tiny text easier to read. Other than that - it's great. Well done.

Exporting from CC3 seems hit and miss for me, and I can't say why. Sometimes it lets me export the whole image with filters at large resolution, then it crashes when I try smaller resolutions without filters, sometimes it crashes when I want to export parts of a map, sometimes it doesn't ... I had it both on my old XP machine and now on my Vista 64 one (which has considerably more horsepower than my previous system).